Cash Show is like the low-budget version of HQ. It has a similar structure: airs live, twelve questions, winners split the prize. But you start can start earning cash if you make it to question 6, each question is worth a specific (split) amount, and you get to keep the money you earn as each question passes.

So you can be knocked out at Question 9 and leave with twelve cents. I still only consider it “winning” if you make it through Question 12, which I did for the first time last Saturday. The main downside is that you can only get your prize as actual money in your possession once you earn ten dollars. Thus, although I have won a total of $3.81, I haven’t gotten any actual money. We’ll see if it falls into the “you might not ever get your money” loophole that HQ did before it let you cash out at any amount.

On a completely unrelated note, I remembered that Netflix has all of the Star Trek series right now, so I decided to finally finish watching Voyager. It was always my favorite since it was the newest when my dad finally converted me. (My mom and I used to make of him for liking Star Trek. I have since eaten my crow.)

My family lived overseas during Voyager‘s original run, so I never got to see the final season. I couldn’t remember how far along I’d watched, though, so I picked a random episode in the second-to-last season with a plot synopsis that sounded familiar.

Imagine my surprise when one of the guest stars was The Rock! He didn’t have any visible tattoos, so I wasn’t sure it was him until he did the eyebrow. Gotta love the eyebrow.

With my summer downtime, I worked through my backlog of alumni magazines. The one from Notre Dame feels like a short book. I don’t know how I managed to read Seventeen cover-to-cover when I was in high school!

The summer issue of Notre Dame Magazine had an intriguing article about young peoples’ declining or absent Catholic lives. The intriguing part wasn’t that it had anything new to say, but that I found myself agreeing with it so wholeheartedly. It doesn’t focus on the same old lines I hear all the time. It discusses a variety of reasons for the decline, and although it doesn’t offer any answers, it also doesn’t point the blame at any single cause. Considering that I’ve skipped a few ND Mag articles recently that made me roll my eyes at how un-Catholic they seemed, this one was a welcome change.

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I have been using Mary Kay powder foundation for a few years now, and until today, I always suffered when I was almost out of product. I was stuck tapping forever on the container to try to get the last bits of powder to sift through. It’s not a cheap product, and I paid for all of it, so I want to put all of it on my face. Reasonable, right?

It didn’t occur to me to Google my problem until this morning. Thanks to YouTube, I now have easy access to that pesky last bit of powder. I just removed the sifter! (Note that I didn’t actually need pliers as shown at the end of this video; I just kept pulling gently with the tweezers until the sifter popped out.)

That was good news; here’s some bad news. Although I have attended more than a few Masses that include a couple’s renewing their weddings vows, that’s not technically a thing. As Fr. McNamara, liturgy Q&A columnist for Zenit, explains, the couple can receive a special blessing, or they can express their intent to renew their commitment, but the vows are only exchanged once. The vows make the sacrament what it is, and you can never redo a sacrament. The couple should be celebrated and encouraged. And who doesn’t love a blessing? But the vows are technically not renewable.

I just finished watching my way through the cult classic TV show Freaks and Geeks. I liked it! It suffered part of the curse Firefly by getting a terrible time slot, but I think it also aired at the wrong point in TV history.

It’s amusing to see F&G described as the anti-Dawson’s Creek since Busy Phillips moved on to that exact show. I kind of enjoyed that the story wasn’t full of wins for the characters. (I also recently saw Rogue One, so I might just be in the mood for stories with messy endings.) I also appreciated the way they moved through different characters’ point of views without the sheer weight of an ensemble show. Maybe that was unintentional, but it worked.

In my quest to read as much about Freaks and Geeks as possible, I discovered that there is a precedent for Marshall’s amazing short list of songs on How I Met Your Mother. Jason Segel apparently learned to play guitar in order to write a terrible, wondeful song “by” his character for another. I was delighted to dig up such a gem.

I was sad to read an article from Aleteia about the role men play in getting women the medical care they (often obviously) need. Sad, but not surprised. I can think of examples from my actual life when I have taken a man along somewhere simply to be present and to advocate for me. Seriously, all I needed them to say was, “Listen to her.” The article reminded me of one of the last few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, when Bailey was having serious heart trouble and wasn’t believed despite being a doctor and the chief of surgery of a large hospital. She was a woman, and everyone knows that women exaggerate. Except when we don’t. Like any human.

If you’ve ever struggled over whether to pray grace when appetizers arrive, whether soup counts as a meal, or what to do when the Mexican restaurant hits you with chips and salsa when you’ve barely sat down, I found the answers for you!

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While viewing a blog post on a serious topic, I was invited to watch this cover of “Somebody That I Used to Know,” a song that grew on me once I started listening to the the lyrics. (I originally just liked the main singer’s vocal range and use of xylophone.) I think this is one of the best covers I’ve ever heard, period. It’s got five people playing a single guitar. This might be better than OK Go.

Although I must say that it is a strange world we live in when, because of this, I am no longer impressed by the video I saw a while ago of two people playing one guitar. The bar has been raised.

— 2 —

I watched the House series finale on my DVR this week. I loved the retrospective they aired before it, even if only to hear Hugh Laurie’s native accent. We’ve had a couple of Australian exchange students at work this year, and I wonder if they’d sound like him if they tried to fake an American accent.

I thought the finale was fantastic. I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t see it coming. The only thing that would have made it perfect was if Cuddy had shown up again. I know she left because of contract negotiations, but I hate when storytellers can’t recover from real-world circumstances. Perhaps it was the House version of “Once More with Feeling”: the bright spot after Buffy had been struggling in its post-cancellation/new network/Buffy’s not dead anymore life. If you’ve never seen House, it is syndicated on multiple channels. And if you have, a great way to look back is to relive eight awesome seasons of Patients of the Week.

Now let’s see if How I Met Your Mother will end as gracefully next spring. (It’s not official, but I don’t think it can last through a ninth season, and I want the ending to be legendary.)

— 3 —

Speaking of House‘s Patients of the Week, I was intrigued earlier this season when Chase had an encounter with a novice. As a Catholic, my ears are always tuned for representations of Catholicism in the media, which are usually inaccurate. In brief, the episode presents the POTW as a woman about to take her first profession in a brown-habited religious order. (I noted that no one on House’s team seems to realize that you can still “get out of it,” so to speak, even after first vows. That’s why they’re first.) Chase, the Australian doctor who went to Catholic school (that magic bullet that gives everyone instant theological expertise!) notices that she is very pretty and is clearly attracted to her. But she’s taken. By God. The episode is titled “Chase,” though, so that’s not the end of it.

The wrinkle is that the woman is also attracted to Chase and shows up at his apartment one night claiming to have given up on religious life. She eventually returns to her order, leaving Chase hurt and confused. I wasn’t quite sure what to think. Now that I’ve viewed that POTW slideshow, I’m guessing the writers needed a nun this season to parallel the one from the first season and to continue to explore House’s (false) science-vs-faith dichotomy. Since the woman is just the POTW, though, we don’t get to see how she moves on from her fling with Chase. I think it was useful to portray that doubting one’s beliefs and choices can confirm them, and that God always forgives. We don’t see a lot of that on TV; we mostly get the leaving and the relief at having given up on past beliefs.

— 4 —

I have been so popular this week. It was my bonus week off from work, so that would usually have spelled disaster in the form of sitting around and not doing much. Instead, I had an outing every single day:

a graduation/birthday party on Sunday between Masses,

a visit to a philosophy-based apologetics series on Monday, featuring a UT professor and 7QT host Mrs. Fulwiler herself),

jury duty on Tuesday morning, during which I didn’t have to actually serve,

my morality discussion group on Tuesday night, which I led for a change,

a friend’s community orchestra concert on Wednesday,

To Kill a Mockingbird at the Paramount with a friend on Thursday, which was still a fantastic movie despite the loud and oddly-timed laughter of many of the other patrons (TKAM is not a funny movie),

I miss Harry Potter. I know it hasn’t gone anywhere, per se, and I just started tiptoeing back into Pottermore, so that’s been delightful. But I miss being part of the fandom at FictionAlley and reading fanfiction and getting to know other fans online and all that jazz. I have currently just rejoined a LiveJournal community centered around Potter-related activities, and I hope that will help. And there’s still a good dozen chapters of Pottermore.

I also plan to actually set up a summer-long slow marathon of all eight movies with a friend of mine. I refuse to watch either part of Deathly Hallows on its own anymore now that they’re both out, though, so that one might require an actual marathon.

— 6 —

I have a video this week, so I’m not as much in need of a picture as usual. I will note, though, that I found a way to brighten up my Booking Through Thursday posts. I turned to Google Images to find a nice big header, and then I asked the creator for permission via email. It felt so old-school to be using an email address instead of a contact form, but it worked out very nicely, and now I can use this:

In her Quick Takes, Jen lamented that other participants have themes for theirs and she doesn’t. I like not having a theme. I see 7QT as my weekly opportunity to dump seven bits of information that aren’t big enough for individual posts. This is the way I used to blog in college. I look at my calendar and think “what happened this week?” And then I write about it. Done and done.

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